Monday, January 21st - it's been a dark and windy night

It's very cold this morning with howling winds. I can hardly wait to go outside to start the car (not). I feel for Brenda on these mornings because it's near impossible to warm up the vast inside of a school bus until sometime after it's on the road.

It was a busy weekend for a change. Friday Bernie, Brenda and Lloyd met me in town after work and we had supper at the Old Dublin Pub. When we were done we walked over to the Basilica for an evening organ recital. There has been a very old organ from a church in Quebec that was moved in, restored and refurbished in the fall.  The church is huge inside and it was packed to standing room only. It was quite an enjoyable evening and certainly a unique experience. It was first played on Christmas Eve and I can only imagine how beautiful Christmas music must have been played on it.

Saturday was just a usual day, work in the morning, shopping on the way home. But this time Brenda and I had a meeting with the Rec Centre. Our IAAP group is planning a conference in 2014 and I'm in charge of planning one of the events. It's like planning a party for 200 hundred of your closest friends! It's a little daunting but I'm really looking forward to providing my cross country friends with a little taste of what my life is now.  If it goes as I imagine, it will be a great time.

Sunday we had the Van Gaal's and Anderson's over for supper. Being as Lloyd's birthday is tomorrow, we decided to have his birthday supper early. We spent the day preparing and I think it was a success.  Our first course was a puff pastry round topped with thin slices of tomatoes and them baked. When they came out of the oven a round of breaded and fried goat cheese was placed on top. It's an interesting combination of textures and flavours and never fails to please. Our main course was Beer Braised Lamb Shanks  with a new recipe for potatoes that I tried, cooked with onions and celery, mashed and mixed with copious amounts of Asiago Cheese and them topped with more cheese and placed in the oven. They were quite good. On the side were sauteed baby carrots, cherry tomatoes and pearl onions. Lloyd's favorite flavour combination is chocolate and orange. So I made a chocolate layer cake infused with finely grated orange zest. The icing was a white cream cheese icing that I also added orange zest to. The combination worked really well and seems to have been enjoyed by all. A big thanks to Brenda for all her help in pulling it all together at the last minute.

We hadn't seen Richard and Darelen for quite a while to it was nice to have everyone all together again.

I did take a picture of the cake but I'm having some technical difficulties this morning and since I slept in a bit I've no time to see what's wrong. Perhaps I'll have some later in the week.